Over the years Tea Research Institute has developed a number of cost effective technologies such as:

Development of improved tea clones and appropriate production technologies. High quality clones capable of yielding over 7000 kg of made tea per hectare per year under good management have been developed and commercialized. View list of Tea Research Institute released clones here.

Simple, appropriate and cost-effective methods of vegetative propagation of tea cuttings. Tea production packages (including methods of bringing tea into bearing and recommendations on plant protection, fertilizer use, pruning, plucking, and processing of high quality black tea at reduced costs).

Tea product quality analysis.

This has contributed to the rapid expansion of tea cultivation and production in the country. For example, the smallholders’ tea sector, whose total tea production area in 1955 was only 56 hectares, accounting for a mere 0.5% of the total area under tea has expanded to over 86,000 hectares accounting for 75% of the total area under tea production in Kenya. The corresponding growth in the sector in terms of total production of made tea per year rose from less than 5,000 tonnes in 1955 to over 328,498 tonnes of made tea in 2005.